Playing the Changes


Book Description

A final sequence highlights the centrality of black music to African American writing, arguing that recognizing blues, gospel, and jazz as theoretically suggestive cultural practices rather than specific musical forms points to what is most distinctive in twentieth-century African American writing: its ability to subvert attempts to limit its engagement with psychological, historical, political, or aesthetic realities.




Gus Dur


Book Description

In October 1999, Abdurrahman Wahid, almost blind and recovering from a nearfatal stroke, was elected as Indonesia's fourth president. Referred to as 'Indonesia's surprising new president' by the Economist, the man who had commanded the highest respect of his fellow countrymen for his lifetime devotion to public service, liberal democracy and tolerant Islam, was impeached in humiliating and controversial circumstances less than two years later. Wise to some, insolent to others, Abdurrahman's mercurial style of leadership constantly confounded critics and ultimately caused him to be widely misunderstood by both domestic and international observers. For the first time, biographer Greg Barton delves beneath the surface and gives us a unique insight into the man and his world drawn from his long relationship with Gus Dur - including being at his side during the final extraordinary months of the presidency. Those interested in the drama of modern Indonesian politics will find this book provides a fascinating and invaluable account of the enigmatic Gus Dur.




The Redundant City


Book Description

Dynamic processes and conflicts are at the core of the urban condition. Against the background of continuous change in cities, concepts and assumptions about spatial transformations have to be constantly re-examined and revised. Norbert Kling explores the rich body of narrative knowledge in architecture and urbanism and confronts this knowledge with an empirically grounded situational analysis of a large housing estate. The outcome of this twofold research approach is the sensitising concept of the Redundant City. It describes a specific form of collectively negotiated urban change.




New Age in Latin America


Book Description

This book is at the crossroads where a New Age sensibility, advancing like an ecumen of worldwide spirituality without national, cultural, or ecclesiastical frontiers, meets Latin America's syncretic religions, practiced by groups of people wiht African or indigenous roots or developed from the tradition of popular Catholicism. The Syncretic character of the two sensibilities makes both the New Age and popular religion behave like two, syncretizing and syncreticizable matrices of meaning. This book opens up a rich vein of debate with new dilemmas and discussions, that will provide a framework for a new field of study in anthropology. What new ways of signifying living and experiencing religion is the New Age generating in Latin America? What are its limits? Contributors are: Alejandra Aguilar Ros, Santiago Bastos, Lizette Campechano, Sylvie Pédron Colombani, Alejandro Frigerio, Jacques Galinier, Silas Guerriero, Cristina Gutiérrez Zúñiga,Nahayeilli B. Juárez Huet, José Guilherme C.Magnani, Antoinette Molinié, María Teresa Rodríguez, Deis Siqueira, Carlos Alberto Steil, Engel Tally, Renée de la Torre, and Marcelo Zamora.




The Spirituality Revolution


Book Description

The Spirituality Revolution addresses the major social issue of spirituality which requires immediate attention if we are to creatively respond to spiralling outbreaks of depression, suicide, addiction and psychological suffering.




All that is Solid Melts Into Air


Book Description

The experience of modernization -- the dizzying social changes that swept millions of people into the capitalist world -- and modernism in art, literature and architecture are brilliantly integrated in this account.




The Christian Century


Book Description




The Living Church


Book Description